135,000 Australian kids in child protection system

Updated
July 25, 2014 09:44:00

A new report into child welfare has found Indigenous children are eight times more likely than non-Indigenous Australians to need child protection services. The study found 26 in every 1,000 Australian children needed help from children protection authorites.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Indigenous children are eight times more likely than non-indigenous Australians to need child protection services.

That's the stark result of a detailed study by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

It's the first time the institute has counted every single child that came into contact with welfare agencies.

In the past, it's only collected data according to the type of intervention so children using multiple services weren't identified.

Lisa Tucker spoke to Dr Pamela Kinnear from the institute.

PAMELA KINNEAR: In 2012/13 we counted that there were just over 135,000 children who were involved with the child protection agency in Australia. Now that doesn't mean that all of those were "taken into care".

In fact, just over half of the children who interacted with this system were interacting just as part of an investigation. That is a notification had been made to the authority and that authority had investigated it.

When you actually look at the three main components of the system where the children were investigated, whether they were on care and protection orders or whether they were in out of home care, we only had fewer than 10 per cent; I think it was around about 8 per cent of children who were in all three parts of the system.

So these are the children who've got obviously very serious levels of risk and who are having pretty intensive engagement with child protection authorities.

LISA TUCKER: What did you find in terms of the difference between the likelihood of an Indigenous child and a non-Indigenous child to be receiving child protection services?

PAMELA KINNEAR: Yes, unfortunately we've got considerable Indigenous overrepresentation; Indigenous children were eight times overrepresented compared to non-Indigenous children, so that's obviously a concern. It's something that child protection authorities are very well aware of and are working on quite closely.

LISA TUCKER: The report also found a significant rise of children abused, neglected or harmed from the year before - almost 30 per cent. What could be behind such a huge increase?

PAMELA KINNEAR: So yes, it was 29 per cent increase in the number of children who were the subject of substantiation, such that a notification had been made and an investigation had been underway and that concern was actually substantiated. So it is a pretty significant increase.

Unfortunately, these sorts of figures never tell you; they often ask more questions than they answer, but I think it's reasonable to consider that there might be a few things going on.

Firstly a number of agencies around the country have actually been focusing much more on targeting their efforts to the children most at risk, a kind of a triage system if you like.

The other thing that could well be feeding into this is that there's been a very considerable enhanced public awareness about child abuse issues over the last few years. You know, obviously there's been a national level royal commission into child sexual abuse, there's been state-based commissions and inquiries. We've had a number of pretty high profile cases that have been the subject of discussion around the community.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Dr Pamela Kinnear from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, speaking to Lisa Tucker.